Newly elected Georgetown University Student Association President Enushe Khan (MSB ’17) will be the first Muslim student to serve as president when she begins her term later this year, while her running mate, GUSA Vice President Chris Fisk (COL ’17) will be the second member of the Georgetown Scholarship Program to serve as an executive officer, after former Vice President Adam Ramadan (SFS ’14).

Khan’s Muslim identity has informed her role in campus activism from her first year at Georgetown. As a freshman, Khan ran for and won a seat on the GUSA senate after noticing the lack of halal foods — foods allowed under Islamic dietary laws — at Georgetown.

“Food was a big issue, and that was sort of affecting my health. That was a common trend with other Muslim students as well,” Khan said. “It’s something that was never a concern for Dining or Auxiliary Services until it really came up in GUSA.”

During her time in the GUSA senate, Khan worked to encourage Georgetown Dining to bring both halal and kosher — food that has been prepared according to Jewish dietary laws — options to its dining facilities.

Khan also joined the board of the Muslim Student Association early in her Georgetown career, serving as chair of Interfaith and Service for five semesters.

While on the MSA board, Khan helped to expand interfaith programming with other student faith groups like the Hindu Student Association and the Jewish Student Association.

Khan said she sees her time on the MSA as illustrative of the kind of community outreach she wants to continue as GUSA president.

“The MSA was pretty insular and isolated from the rest of the campus ministry community, and one thing I really wanted to do was start some more programming with JSA, HSA and other groups,” Khan said.

Fisk has been actively involved with the GSP since he first arrived on campus. A first-generation college student, Fisk credits his GSP financial aid package for allowing him to attend Georgetown and stressed the importance of affordability in creating a more diverse campus.

“One thing is getting acceptance letters for people who are of low income, but it’s another thing getting financial aid packages,” Fisk said. “When I got my financial aid package from GSP, that was the day I knew I was coming to Georgetown, not necessarily when I got my acceptance letter.”

Fisk said his experience as a GSP student informed his advocacy work on campus, in particular, increasing the role of lower-income students in some of Georgetown’s most prominent clubs and organizations.

Fisk joined the Blue & Gray Tour Guide Society as a tour guide, and eventually took a role on the group’s board where he helped change the application to better enable lower-income students to be tour guides. Fisk said the application change has helped increase GSP representation in Blue & Gray.

“Blue & Gray is totally flipped on its head now in accepting a very, very large number of GSP students now because they’ve changed that process,” Fisk said.

Fisk served as the director of the Georgetown Student Fellows program last summer, which gives eight students the opportunity to work unpaid internships in Washington, D.C. Fisk also took a position as co-chair of Strategic Partnerships and Advocacy on GSP’s board and helped develop the program’s #GSProud social media campaign to raise awareness of GSP’s role on campus.

Khan said she believes her and Fisk’s respective religious and socio-economic identities have helped shape their campaign and will continue to impact their work during their one-year term in the GUSA executive.

“I think a big part of why this ticket happened and why this team happened, a lot of it played into our identities of coming from a sort of nontraditional Georgetown,” Khan said.

Muslim Chaplain Imam Yahya Hendi said Khan’s GUSA win reflects the student body’s commitment to electing the most qualified candidate, regardless of any other factor.

“You have students from all over the world who came together to elect someone for the betterment of the community on the basis of what she can do, not on the basis of her gender, religion or ethnic background,” Hendi said. “And that’s what we need worldwide.”

GUSA Freshman South District Senator Saad Bashir (COL ’19) said he sees Khan and Fisk’s election as evidence of Georgetown’s broader commitment to tolerance and inclusivity.

“This election affirms some key values that Georgetown prides itself on such as equality and diversity, but it also tells the world that Georgetown’s student body will not sit idly as people’s faith or race or whatever reason is attacked,” Bashir said.

Khan said she hopes her and Fisk’s diverse backgrounds will allow them to bring together

“I can speak to how the Muslim community has tended to really isolate itself in the past. You have these communities, these pockets here on campus who feel like they can’t engage with the rest of the Georgetown community,” Khan said. “A big thing for us is how can we work with these groups to create a Georgetown where that’s no longer a fear.”